Today on Crypto This Week we comment on the newest partnership between Coinbase and Circle, the change in Litecoin’s fees, Airdrops and more.
A New Blockchain Phone?
HTC, the Taiwanese phone giant has a new blockchain phone called Exodus 1 which can only be bought with cryptocurrencies, hoping to entice crypto users. HTC’s new phone will run decentralized applications, digital programs that operate on the blockchain.
It also comes with a “Social Key Recovery” function that lets a user regain access to their funds if they lose their private key via a select number of trusted contacts.
The Exodus will come with wallets configured to store currencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum meant to be much more secure than storing a wallet on your regular phone using an app. The blockchain phone is now available for pre-orders and will cost you 0.15 Bitcoins or 4.78 Ethereum which is around $950 at current exchange rates.
Coinbase Partners With Circle
Two of the largest cryptocurrency companies, Coinbase and Circle announced a joint-venture known as the “CENTRE Consortium” on Tuesday, which they say claim will speed up the adoption of cryptocurrencies backed by actual government currencies like the U.S. dollar.
“Coinbase and Circle share a common vision of an open global financial system built on crypto rails and blockchain infrastructure, and realizing this vision requires industry leaders to collaborate to build interoperable protocols and standards…”
Circle CEO recently told CNBC that investors will still rely on the government-backed money — it just needs to be able to operate on the same blockchain technology.
“We see USDC as a major step towards a more open financial system. The advantage of a blockchain-based digital dollar – like USDC – is that it is easier to program, send, use in apps, and store locally than traditional US dollars…”
The “USD Coin” which is Circle’s very own Stablecoin as of Tuesday will trade on the Coinbase exchange. Circle and CoinBase, valued at $3 billion and $8billion respectively, believe that despite bitcoin’s price slump, the crypto economy is here to stay.
Litecoin Slashes Transaction Fees
Following the 7th anniversary for Litecoin, their team took to Twitter to announce the upcoming release of Litecoin Core 0.17 which will lower network fees to half a cent. The average transaction fee right now is 0.05 USD, but with this new update, the fee will reduce drastically to 0.005 USD which is half a cent and back at 2015 levels.
The Litecoin Core Lead Developer elaborated on the fee reduction, saying that he thinks it is a good move and it’s intended to encourage more adoption and usage of the coin. He went on to predict that the current bear market will be over in 3 to 6 months and the reduced fee-rates will give Litecoin a proactive advantage.
“To encourage more adoption and usage of Litecoin, I think lowering the fees are a good thing. We’re not even close to block limits and the block size on disk is pretty small (20GB) relative to other coins. Technically people can already adjust their fees right now to the one above because of the more relaxed min relay/dust relay fee. I also don’t think it will be too much longer before this bear market is over (3–6 months) so it will lay down the foundation for a fee-rate which we can grow into proactively rather than reactively.”
Litecoin is having a good run so far, including last week’s addition to the Winklevoss twins-backed Gemini exchange.
And now, this week’s airdrops, Miracle Tele and Berminal.
Miracle Tele (TELE)
Miracle Tele is a virtual mobile network operator high-quality international call and browsing services on a revolutionary SIM card.
Miracle Tele is airdropping 90 TELE tokens the equivalence of €11.70 to airdrop participants and 10 TELE the equivalence of €1.30 for every referral. The current rate is 1 TELE equaling 0.13 EURO
How to join the airdrop:
- Sign up on Miracle Tele website.
- Verify your mail
- Join their Telegram
- Like their Facebook page/Repost
- Follow them on Twitter/Retweet
Berminal (BERM)
Berminal is an impartial and decentralized cryptocurrency and blockchain information app created and curated by a team of professional and multilingual journalists with experience at CCN, CoinTelegraph, TechCrunch and others. Berminal is airdropping 100 BERM tokens equivalence of $5 to airdrop participants and 100 BERM tokens equivalence of $5 for every referral. You can earn an additional 50 BERM tokens every day by using the app and reading the crypto news. ICO price is 1 BERM equaling 0.05 USD
How to join the airdrop:
- Go to the Berminal AirDrop page
- Submit your phone number
- Download the Berminal app
- Create an account.
- Enter ”EARN” as redeem code
